Pretty. Stupid.

Danny McCarthy is a journalist focused on the intersection of pop culture and politics. His work has appeared in Westchester Magazine, Mediaplanet, The Odyssey Online and The BU Buzz. He is passionate about queer issues, personal essays and Ina Garten. He is currently pursuing a Master's in Journalism from the University of Southern California.

Slim Pickens

Grade: B-

Essentially, Riverdale is a show about the power of journalism – that and bizarrely hot high schoolers. The Riverdale Register and the Blue-and-Gold play crucial roles in exposing the seedy underbelly of Riverdale.

Things are reaching a boiling point; Archie is trying to balance sports with being an undercover FBI mole; Cheryl’s mother is running a brothel from their cottage; Veronica is training to be the scion of the Lodge family criminality; Betty is grappling with her newfound brother; and Kevin is running track, wrestling and writing a gossip column! Shockingly, minus the wrestling and the cruising for dick in dark woods, Kevin is me in high school.

The entire episode is framed around Pickens Day: a day to honor General Augustus Pickens. He, bankrolled by Cheryl’s ancestor, settled the land that would one day be Riverdale.

While Cheryl is petitioning to get it renamed to Barnabas B. Blossom Day, the Adults are using it to their advantage. Spurred by the bad press of closing Southside High, the Lodges and Fred Andrews want to sponsor Pickens Day to restore goodwill amongst the So-Dale project. Mayor McCoy, who is getting sudden nosebleeds from the high horse she’s decided to clamber onto (despite banging the sheriff and taking Lodge hush-money), is strongly against it. Also her name is Sierra?

It turns out that General Pickins operates as Riverdale’s Christopher Columbus: honored in the present because of efforts to whitewash his bloody past. It turns out that Toni and other Serpents are the descendents of the Uktena people, who were the original inhabitants of the land that would be Riverdale. But Great-Great-Great-Grandpappy Barnabas B. Blossom (a real Hiram Lodge) wanted the land for development (the maple industry, brothels, saloons and railroads), and hired General Pickins to slaughter the Uktena, 400 people.

Veronica, at the end of the table, casts her vote for bolstering Pickens Day, when Archie comes home. Drama! When he reports this development to Agent Adams – gay love affair – the FBI agent urges him to cozy up to Hiram Lodge by any means necessary. Archie, after learning that Hiram loves wrestling, decides to go out for the wrestling team. Basically, this episode is largely stagnant and dull, but gives us ample shots of Archie being hot. It’s a win, people, except that Archie kind of sucks at wrestling (even Kevin can pin him down, albeit later calling Archie a “1970s’ pornstar”). By the way, Kevin is a straight-up freak and I love it, because it leads us into Betty’s B-plot.

She learns, via Kevin, that Chic is a cam-boy, a digital gigolo, a virtual hooker. This is where I get a little preachy. Chic was put up for adoption, aged out of the foster care system and received no handouts from anybody. What he does to make money is of no business to anyone, least of all the rich, well-to-do famiy that decides to drop into his life unannounced. Although I’m not here for him introducing Betty, who is…16? 15?…to cam-life, or as Jughead refers to it, “The Dark Education of Betty Cooper.”

Betty and Chic bond over their weird rage-flashes and tendency to dig their fingernails into their palms hard enough to draw blood. She’s especially protective of him against Hal, who is, by the way, definitely not the father of Chic. That divide in the family deepens enough that, after a full-out fight on Pickens Day, Hal falls into the treacly company of Penelope Blossom.

The rest of the episode plays out like this: Jughead uses the plight of the Uktena to write an article (journalism!) lambasting Pickens Day as the celebration of slaughter (in the process angering Toni for “using” her grandfather) before all the Serpents protest the festival and, allegedly, desecrate the statue of Pickens.

Archie trains privately (gay) with Hiram Lodge, sinking deeper into treacherous Lodge waters as he defeats Chuck Clayton (remember him?) and earns the respect of Hiram. Oh and Mayor McCoy’s high horse gets in the way of a Josie-Veronica friendship, culminating in the band, “Veronica and the Pussycats.” Oh, and Cheryl realizes her ancestor was a bloodthirsty monster (are you really surprised, Cheryl? Look at who everyone else in your family is!), thus opening up the potential for her to approach Toni.

In the end, Archie denies a call from Agent Adams in favor of chatting with Hiram Lodge, leading us to wonder, “Is Archie getting too deep into the Lodges?” Is he infiltrating or converting? Upon a second watch, I noticed a squid lapel pin on Hiram’s suit. Could Archie be caught in the clutches without him even realizing?

I didn’t love this episode because, despite the ~drama~, it really operated to set up other shoes to drop later on.

What’s with the backpack situation in Riverdale?

Grade: A

Riverdale is back! And all the dominos set up in the former half of the season are getting knocked down in the latter.

With the Black Hood unmasked (theoretically, I don’t believe it) we can move onto the mysteries of Lodge Industries. I personally would love a refresher on what they’ve done, but from what I can glean: Hiram Lodge, during and after being released from prison, has been using the Southside Serpents to depreciate land value in Riverdale and then swooping in to buy the land for development and gentrification. There also seems to be a drug element that wasn’t resolved before the mid-season finale, so I have to assume that that’s emanating from Casa Lodge.

But with the Black Hood nightmare over, the citizens of Riverdale are finding other ways to occupy their time. Utilizing Archie’s sleuthing, the FBI has sent a former Riverdale resident to recruit him into taking Hiram Lodge down. Despite the fact that Archie did nothing to solve the murder of Jason Blossom or the mystery of the Black Hood and that Betty did everything, the FBI is interested in him, mainly for his connection to Veronica and his own father’s involvement in Lodge Industries.

As an aside, the scene between FBI Guy and Archie could play equally as well as the introduction to a multi-episode gay porn arc. Agent Adams (gay) wants a few simple things from Archie: investigate the Nick St. Clair (Sinclair?) accident, and a deeper understanding of Lodge Industries.

Due to some nefarious dealings between Mayor McCoy and the Lodges (damn, they’re really earning their paycheck this season) Southside High has closed and its students are being move to Riverdale High. Normally, in comparison to teen murders and serial killers, normal storylines like school district consolidations would be a total bummer. But I’m just so glad that these kids are in class – I was worried about their college prospects. Now I’m just worried about the disturbing lack of backpacks amongst the Southside students.

And so while Veronica (who knew from her parents that Southside was closing), Archie and Betty are welcoming towards the merger – even as it muddies the water of a Bughead break-up (was it a break-up?) – others are not as enthused. Cheryl Blossom, backed by Reggie (hot) and a coterie of cheerleaders (a swarm of cheerleaders? A gaggle? A culture?), is using dog-whistle language to lament the loss of Riverdale’s above-average GPA. This seems oddly out of character for Cheryl (she’s a bitch, not a racist) so here’s my theory.

First, Cheryl is deeply insecure, and hates any change. Second, she’s also self-conscious of her own family’s changing socioeconomic status.

But at the core is the squaring off between Toni Topaz and Cheryl. Before the season started, the powers-that-be suggested that Cheryl would be getting an unexpected love interest. Basically, that’s code for “queer.” Now that we’ve seen Cheryl’s weird love for Josie, the stage has been set for a same-sex Cheryl romance. I’m here for it – Cheryl’s never read as particularly “straight” to me, and her kissing Archie at the end of season one felt much more like a desire for closeness than sexual tension.

So while Cheryl amps up the anti-Southside sentiment (leading to stricter censorship of Southside regalia, Jughead’s suspension and a burgeoning possibility of romance between Kevin Keller and Southside’s Fogarty – could we be getting two queer romances for the low, low price of $9.99 a month?) Betty’s B-plot involves the Mysteriously Pregnant Polly who is no longer Pregnant. Post-natal Polly has given birth to twins (“Juniper and Dagwood”) without telling the rest of her family. To make it up to her mother (?), Betty decides to locate Alice’s long-lost son.

They discover he’s living two towns over and his name is Charles. Against Hal’s express wishes, Alice and Betty visit him in his hollow-cheeked glory. Charles “Chic” Smith is doing some shady work making people’s “fantasies” come true and is appropriately resentful towards his birth family. After a tense first meeting, Betty goes back to the apartment complex only to find her brother being stabbed by a strange, hulking man. God, what isn’t gay porn in this show?

Inevitable creepiness (including some Chic standing over Betty while she’s sleeping – light fare) ensues, and that’s the that on that. Until next episode (!!!).

Archie uses Cheryl as a red herring in order to get close to Nick. I’m really hating how people keep using Cheryl (and her assault) as means to an end. In an attempt to get her mother to stop hustling (literally being a “courtesan”) Cheryl will do anything to get that money, even reliving painful memories and gifting Archie the blazer of her dead, hot brother.

Under the guise of getting Nick to replicate that hush money, Archie somehow scrounges up the money to fly to New York to intimidate Nick. His goal is to get Nick to admit that the Lodges broke his legs for attempting to rape Veronica.

Side note: there are a lot of layers to this, but let it not be forgotten that the Lodges were fine with Nick when they thought he just attempted to rape Cheryl, but broke his legs when they found out what he had done to their daughter. Rape culture, y’all.

Nick taunts Archie; Archie breaks Nick’s nose; and despite getting the hush money, the trip is painted as rather fruitless. Agent Adams admonishes Archie for getting “sloppy” and Archie does not get Veronica to admit that she told her parents about Nick’s assault on her. And when she turns the tables – sensing that he’s lying to her – Archie uses the fact that Cheryl (technically) blackmailed him into helping her under the threat of releasing the secret of Archie kissing Betty. Given the town they live in (with rapists, drug dealers, and serial killers) and the fact that all parties were single, Veronica has an annoyingly overblown reaction. “You kissed?” she asked, in the same diner where, weeks earlier, Archie’s father had been shot point-blank and left for dead.

In the last, lingering moments of an incredible episode, Archie gives a voice to something that we’ve (me’ve) all been thinking. “In your expert opinion, Agent Adams,” he says, his caveman-hot brows drawn close and his voice gravelly, “do you think we got the right Black Hood? Because I’m not so sure.”

Season 2B (is that what we’re calling it) is off to an epic start. I cannot wait to see what else is in store. I really enjoy that the mystery of the Black Hood lingers, but I’m excited to dig deep into the Lodge drama.

Until next time, think about the fact that no Southside Serpents had backpacks and the only one was a Coachella-appropriate red number from Cheryl that would only fit a popper and some Kleenex.

Somehow Riverdale did the impossible – they made sex, drugs and murder boring.

The episode conveyed as if they had taken the A-plots from three separate episodes, edited them down to fit into forty-two minutes and hoped that no one would notice. So many of the scenes lacked context or buildup; they were all just heightened emotion, which, without context, just reads as campy. And it’s a shame because the most compelling (and I’m supposing actual) A-plot, Betty, was lost in the shuffle. And interesting potential plot points, like Alice going off the rails were completely truncated. The separate subplots of this episode – Jughead’s initiation, Veronica sinking into her family business, and Betty grappling with the Black Hood – could not have felt more distant from each other.

I truly feel like I’m missing something while watching this episode. The scenes followed each other sloppily. We barely saw Juggie’s initiation, we just heard about it after. Then suddenly Jughead is halfway through his initiation and Toni is in his trailer trying to warn him.

Out of nowhere, the Lodges are having cash-flow issues and it’s falling on Veronica’s shoulders to secure an investment from the visiting St. Clair’s. I was actually paying attention and have no idea who the St. Clair family is, except that they have the much-needed capital, and in a social climate of sexual predation, it’s weird that the St. Clair son, who is now a “music producer” (?), is flirting with Veronica, who is a sophomore. Weird and gross and weird and creepy.

Agents of Chaos And the Plot Thickens

Grade: A

The trap that CW shows fall into sometimes is “adulterizing” their shows. “Teenagers” (aka twentysomethings with young faces and six-packs) deal with very adult situations in very adult ways, in very adult clothes. It’s the trap that Riverdale has fallen into, mostly because the actual adults in the town of Riverdale are absentee at their very best, and downright maniacal at their very worst. But this episode, framed similarly to a “bottle episode,” brought out a much more teenager-y vibe. And as someone who is definitely no longer a teenager but still acts like a child, I really appreciated that.

When you mix a bunch of people whose brains haven’t finished forming with alcohol and cake, you get essentially what last night’s episode was—secrets spilled like the syrupy margarita mix spreading across the table like a bloodstain, emotions running high, and no one eating the cake. Tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

It’s Jughead’s birthday and for semi-unspecified reasons, he hates his birthday and no one knows about it. He says it’s because his family dynamic was so messed-up but for one “arbitrary” day, they would click together in artificial happiness—ostensibly to make him feel better when it actually just made him feel worse. I can totally sympathize with the notion of holidays getting you down—Instagram is the fucking worst.

Archie lets it slip to Betty that it’s Juggie’s birthday and wanting to be a Good Girlfriend, she arranges a small party of the Inner Circle. The “Inner Circle”—a phrase that gets annoyingly tossed around, like, eight times this episode—consists of Jughead, Archie, Betty, Veronica, Kevin, Kevin’s boyfriend Joaquin, and Ethel Muggs. What a fucking rager. Jughead said it best later in the show when, in a rage at Betty, he says that he would’ve actively avoided people like Veronica and Kevin before they became friends with Betty. Kevin barely appears in the show, so the fact that he’s Inner Circle means that, quite literally, Jughead has no friends.

This episode also was really rude to its Hot Redheads, and for a show that started out with the bullet-to-the-face murder of a Hot Redhead, that’s saying a lot. Cheryl is challenged by Veronica for control of the Vixens (operating essentially as surrogates for their respective fathers), and Drunk Archie has a beer thrown on him when he bugs Val to talk. As a Hot Redhead, this episode—obviously—made me uncomfortable.

The party was supposed to be small but the resident Agents of Chaos—Cheryl and Chuck, who’s back from his suspension—crash the Inner Circle with two kegs and bad intentions. Cheryl ropes everybody into a game of Secrets & Sins—like Truth or Dare but sluttier and more dangerous—where multiple different episodic threads come undone in one moment. Chuck reveals that Betty roofied him and went Zero Dark Betty. Dilton Doiley reveals that he saw Ms. Grundy’s car at Sweetwater River the day Jason died and that Archie was there too. Veronica basically reveals what we all thought—that Cheryl was twincestingly in love with Jason and killed him. It’s fucking twisted and gnarly and perfect.

All these concentric circles have been spinning around each other, inches apart. And now—thanks to Cheryl—they’re beginning to bump into each other and cause ripples of chaos. And though this operated largely as a bottle episode contained inside the party, I think the effects of this night will play out over the last three episodes.

The end of the show sets up too parallelisms, two sets of couples both preening in their own destructiveness. Jughead accepts Betty back into his arms only after realizing her dark side (which is problematic, but I can’t deal with that right now) and Veronica and Archie bond over their parents’ messed up relationships. Sadly, I thought this episode would have more Shirtless Archie (we only got a brief glimpse at the beginning and at the end) and Cheryl, but the Cheryl that we did get (Evil Fur Cheryl) was spectacular.

This episode very strongly brought back Zero Dark Betty, which I’m hoping they delve more deeply into. It’s the only interesting facet of Betty, and semi-mirrors the outwardly dark-sided Cheryl. Really, they’re the only two characters that display some sort of nuance other than a base drive. Jughead (a hot, cis white guy) is the Weirdo. Archie is the Artist-Jock. Veronica’s the Reformed Bad Girl. Kevin is the Gay. Cheryl and Betty—tied together by the death of Jason and the life of Polly—are the only ones that teeter between multiple depths at all times. And if Riverdale was smart, they would capitalize on that.

All in all, this episode brought me everything a CW show should—teen drama, salacious scandal, alcohol, hot guys (not shirtless enough, but still hot) and murder. In an ever-mutating world, it’s nice to have at least one thing to count on.

Next Week: “To Riverdale and Back Again” (Only three episodes left!

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

The return of Psycho Betty

The return of Shirtless Archie

UGH THAT TOO-TIGHT HENLEY

Is that true about the Three Musketeers? That there were four?

Veronica wears GLASSES

Cheryl wearing a shirt that says HBIC on the back

CHERYL IN A FUR IS MY GOD

Spooky threatening note by Hiram

Drunk Archie makes me feel…things

“Oh, it’s Kevin…”—Juggie

BETTY IS A FUCKING CREEP WHEN SHE’S SINGING

“Now we’re here…in the middle of a Seth Rogen movie.”

Archie wears…a lot of cardigans. A lot of tight, tight cardigans

Kevin wants to fuck on the banks of Sweetwater River, like really bad

Alice Cooper=full Rear Window

I HATE when hot, cis white guys are like “I’m a weirdo; I don’t fit in” I wear beanies and write weird stories on my laptop

Sins of the Father

Grade: A

Honey never goes bad. And because it never spoils, it can be used to preserve things indefinitely. There was a myth once of a Greek king whose queen died tragically. To cope with the pain, he entombed her body in honey—thus preserving her forever. It seems like the Blossoms are trying the same—preserving Jason’s memory by suffocating Archie in sweet maple syrup. But the problem with preservation is that that thing you’re trying to keep will still be dead when you uncover it.

In fact, this entire episode centers around preservations of things gone spoilt. Betty struggles to hold together her family, Veronica is trying to reconcile her father as the parent she loves with the monstrous businessman in the shadows. The beginning of the series delved into the dysfunctional mothers of Riverdale, and now we’ve moved onto the fathers. Fred Andrews, Cliff Blossom, Hal Cooper. Speaking of the last one, Hal Cooper is totally a concussed football troll gone to seed.

In the A-plot, Archie is being roped into the Blossom family drama. The members of the Blossom Maple Farm board are descending upon Thorn Hill for the annual first tapping of the maple tree. With the scandal of Jason’s murder, and his role as the heir presumptive of the family business, the board members are trying to edge the Blossoms out of the company. The entire first half of the episode is dredged in layers of sexism as Cliff Blossom tries to coil his meaty, rosacea hands around Archie’s broad, sculpted shoulders. Cliff wants Archie to temper out Cheryl’s irrationalness and erraticism. She is, apparently, not even remotely being considered to run the company. Let’s not forget that Jason was a drug-mule and knocked up his high school girlfriend, and he—as a boy—was still considered more stable than Cheryl. Sexism.

This was the first episode that I got a slightly lower register on the Cersei scale from Cheryl. Yes, her obsession with her brother verges on pornographic, but something was illuminated for me. Jason was the golden child—in the eyes of his parents, the school, in sports. And he was always the biggest champion of Cheryl. She was always tolerated because Jason marketed them as a package deal. Without him by her side, she’s back to being the pariah.

Like Jughead analogizes in his last voiceover, Cheryl is a hurricane about to bear down on Riverdale. But as much as that works for her potential destructiveness, it also serves to elucidate her role as the center of Riverdale. Everyone this episode operates in her orbit. The Blossom family board underestimate her. Archie uses her for her parents’ connection to some top-tier music program. Polly is using her to find out if the Blossom parents had something to do with Jason’s death. Only Jason never asked anything of Cheryl—never wanted her beauty, or her crazy, or her connections. Only Jason wanted just her. And unmoored, without Jason, Cheryl is cracking in the most interior parts of her soul.

In the accompanying B-plots, Veronica tries to balance the karma scales by being especially nice to Ethel Muggs. Ethel’s father, Manfred Muggs, tried to commit suicide because he invested money with Hiram Lodge and lost everything. Subsequently, the Muggs are going to testify against Hiram in court. Something that wasn’t said, but could be possible given Hiram’s far reach from prison, is that Manfred’s “suicide” attempt might have been a little…induced by Hiram’s machinations.

Betty and Alice try to bring Polly back, unaware that Polly is at Thorn Hill as a spy. Their plan is to write a scorched-earth exposé of the Blossoms—how Cliff Blossom is the one who put Hiram in jail, their treatment of Cheryl, the circling vulture movements of the family board. It comes to a halt when Hal, a human erectile dysfunction commercial, cuts Alice off from the Riverdale Register. Alice then throws a brick through the front door of the newspaper office—go Alice—and later, Jughead suggests Alice write for the high school newspaper. Madchen Amick, who plays Alice, is a great actress so her scenes are electric, but I was mostly bored with the Cooper subplot. Sorry babe.

The episode’s cliffhanger is the addition of a new suspect. We learned from Archie’s overhearing that Clifford Blossom put Hiram Lodge in jail, thus “shattering” his family. We’ve seen Hiram’s ability to enact his will from jail, so is it possible that he made his own revenge—shattering the Blossom family with the murder of their most prized possession?

Intrigue.

Veronica learns that trying to preserve her family legacy doesn’t always work. Betty realizes that in times of strife, people either come together or fall apart. And dear, dear Cheryl. As she sobs, scrawling over Archie and Polly’s faces in a photograph with a red Sharpie, Polly knocks at the door. Cheryl hastily wipes up her tears and spreads a smile across her full, syrupy-red lips. In a hurricane, the center is often the only part that is not seized by wild winds. But that calm center belies the most dangerous part of the storm. Beware of Cheryl. And beware, Cheryl. As she preserves her rage behind layers of clear gold maple syrup, she could be entombing herself in the process.

Grade: A

After a multi-week hiatus (and a much-needed break for me) Riverdale is back and stronger from its absence. In an episode that catapults off the character introductions of the previous few episodes (something that seemed tedious in the moment), the drama is H.E.R.E.

The last few episodes dragged because they were building character backstories. We met Polly and FP and Mr. Cooper and the Blossoms (even crazy Nana). So when everyone appeared in this episode, there wasn’t the need to have a lead-up. We know these people. Things have been teed and now Riverdale is winding up to hit it out of the park.

Andrews Construction is going through a tough time. Clifton Blossom has stolen all of Fred’s crew out from under him—forcing Fred to halt breaking ground on the drive-in property. That way, Fred and the mysterious buyer (the incarcerated Mr. Hiram Lodge) will be forced to sell the property, which Clifton will promptly snap up.

And as Fred popped open another beer to sip, I watched his sad turtle face and wondered if he had voted for Trump. I believe he did, and I don’t begrudge him for it. Middle America, single father, working class. Few jobs, struggling to make ends meet for his gorgeous son—I could believe that Fred would fall for the Trump rhetoric.

However, Archie and the Gangbang Boys show up to work as Fred’s crew—Archie, Juggie, Kevin (remember her?) Moose (remember him? He and Kevin almost fucked in the woods before Jason’s corpse cockblocked them—corpse-blocked?) and Random Extras 1-3. It’s never fully addressed if they should be in school, only that they’ll do work after football practice and weekends. Because that’s what back-breaking construction work should be—an afterschool hobby.

“Come on,” Hermione says, trying to convince Fred, “desperate times…” She trails off, and I have to wonder exactly what she would’ve ended that sentence with. “Desperate times…call for a disregard for child labor laws?” Where is Lewis Hine when you need him?

After a hard day at work, the boys file into that work-cabin-aluminum-can thing for some ice-cold sodas. Kevin pushes back his gelled hair away from his dirt-smudged face, looking like Lumberjack Ken—the doll that young gay boys everywhere would’ve wanted for Christmas—when Moose, looking for his phone on the lot, stumbles upon some thugs smashes a crowbar into the…electric-thingy? Unclear. They beat up Moose, and I totally thought Kevin would cradle Moose’s head in his lap and do a Spiderman-kiss, but that didn’t happen so I’ll have to find something else for my “Sad Gay Spank Bank.”

In my head, the reason why Kevin has been so absent—so absent that it’s revealed that that Southside Serpent he hooked up with at the drive-in is his boyfriend now—is because he’s off filming an entirely separate show. It’s just him and Serpenty (Joaquin?) sipping phosphates at Pop’s and searching the shelves of Riverdale’s version of CVS for generic-brand douches. It’s called Keller High Water and I’m working up a spec script to pitch to the CW. But back to our regular programming.

Actually, this entire episode had a very political, us-versus-them undertone. When Chief Keller rolls his stubbly face to the scene, he really “can’t do much.” Archie points out that if this were Clifton Blossom asking for help, Keller would help. And that, Archiekins, is the premise of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

While the Gangbang Boys—Archie, Moose, Kevin and KEVIN’S BOYFRIEND—go to a Southside Serpent bar, for…reasons (?), Betty, Veronica and Juggie throw Polly a “You’re a Teenager but We Have No Concept of Age-Appropriate Behavior” baby shower.

While there, before Cheryl BURSTS in with a black Gothic pram, Polly asks Betty to be the baby’s godmother.

“Me?” asks round-eyed Betty. “Yes,” answers Polly. “If anything happens to me, I want you to raise the baby.” I’m unclear about the legality of “godparent” in general, since my godmother only sent me the occasional birthday card and I was the altar boy in her wedding, but how binding is this proclamation? Especially when both people involved are not even 18?

Archie and the Gangbang Boys stomp into the bar—and side bar, Archie really knows how to wear a pair of jeans. Like those are definitely an athletic cut, and his muscular thighs are filling those things To. The. Brim—to ostensibly look for the thugs who beat up Moose. Because they’re stereotyping (political commentary) and assume the Southside Serpents are evil. Archie gets into a fight with a guy in a beanie (dark) and as it gets physical, Beanie says, in a brief moment, that Archie isn’t the first little prep to come in here causing trouble.

*gasp*

Jason? Rememer when Jason was dealing drugs—yeah that was for the Serpents. So it seems like FP has a motive for burning up Jason’s car; no trace, no conviction.

The boyz find out that Juggie’s dad is a Serpent—which, duh—total drama. Archie bursts into Polly’s shower to reveal Jughead as a lil baby ssssnake. This isn’t even the most dramatic thing about the shower. Polly screaming at Mrs. Blossom and her mother is the most dramatic thing, followed closely by the creepy-as-fuck rocking horse that Madame Blossom gifts to Polly. Fuck.

After a terse resolution, Polly reveals to her mother and Betty that Mr. Cooper tried to convince Polly to get an abortion. Alice is horrified and shocked—and this is a woman who claimed that she was pissed she didn’t murder Jason Blossom—and eventually throws her husband out for it. But the rift between the parents Cooper pushes Polly into the cold, creepy embrace of the Thorn Hill Blossoms. And as the grand mahogany door closes, you can see the white skullish face of Mrs. Blossom in the crack.

The episode seemed largely stand-alone, but that’s because you didn’t let me finish, hunhy. In back-to-back scenes, we get a whiff of some nefarious action from darksided DILF FP Jones. He gives Kevin’s twunk boyfriend the task of hiding Jason’s jacket, when we find out that FP is the one behind Kevin’s burgeoning new relationship—entirely to get to Chief Keller. Poor Kev. He really has had a rough go of it. Then FP offers himself and his dudes as Fred’s crew. Uh-oh.

Now what Riverdale has to do is begin to tie together the threads they’ve laid out. This will be a 13-episode season, so we’re well past the halfway mark. What sort of security does Jason’s jacket provide FP? What did Alice mean when she said she was “capable” of things? Who told Hiram Lodge about Hermione and Fred, and is that really why he sent thugs to the site? Why does Betty keep wearing blue? Does Jughead have a bald spot from wearing that beanie? Did he get his beanie from Beanie Guy?

Next week: La Grande Illusion

STRAY MOMENTS:

Is it winter in Riverdale? Is there a reason that we are being punished with no Shirtless Archie?

Polly went from being, like, 8 months to 3 months. Seriously, she was so pregnant at the asylum.

“Nana has dementia…and gypsy blood.”

“Do you think you can waltz in here with a bedbug-infested rocking horse, wave a blank check around, and steal my daughter?”

Adapted from a column written for class.

If you watch bad television enough, you begin to realize that hot people are all hot in the same way. And if you watch bad young-adult television enough, you begin to realize that all hot gay guys on television tend to look exactly the same. They just cloning the same beautiful people over and over again—Brave New World-style.

CW’s Riverdale is a dark, sultry teen-thriller interpretation of the Archie comics. The show mixes the idealistic setting of the comic, which began issue in 1942, with weird, neon sex appeal. The show carried onto screen Kevin Keller, the first openly gay character in the comic. It was a breakthrough in the comic and it was a breakthrough on screen—in pre-premiere interviews, the cast prized the character Kevin as “more than” a gay best friend, sassy sidekick or comic relief. He would have a storyline, nuance and depth. Great.

On screen, Kevin Keller is played by Casey Cott. When I first saw him, I thought Cott looked familiar: gorgeous in the Ken Doll, teen drama kind of way. Full lips, chiseled jaw, dark hair parted severely. But then I realized that he just looked like every hot twentysomething playing a fourteen-year-old on TV, and I assumed that the actor was gay. I assumed Cott was gay because…I just did. I had no reason to not to.

I followed him on Instagram because I’m a masochist and love to torture myself with photos of more attractive, more successful gays. I saw that he had posted a ton of photos with his cast members. That’s how they’re marketing themselves: best buddies—two straws, one milkshake kind of buddies.

Side bar: I’m not close enough with anyone to split a milkshake with them. And I’m not friends with anyone stupid enough to try.

One blonde girl kept popping up in every photo who wasn’t a cast member. It would be him in a close-fitting fedora (very LA), leading man KJ Apa (Archie Andrews), and Blonde Girl. Him, co-star Madelaine Petsch (Cheryl Blossom), and Blonde Girl. Blonde Girl everywhere. I thought she was a close friend, a far-distant E-list celebrity/YouTube star/model who was hitching her wagon to his. I accepted that explanation because I know when I become famous, I’m going to drag some of my friends into stardom with me. Everyone needs personal assistants, amiright?

Curious after seeing her multiple times, I clicked on her tag and went to her profile. Her curation of photos was much more deliberately of him and sans the Riverdale cast. Her and Casey Cott on set. Her and Casey getting coffee. Casey and her dog, playing together. The pieces began to fall together and the truth was confirmed with her caption under the photo of Casey and the dog.

“PSA: Your dog will steal your man.”

They were dating; this groundbreaking historic gay character was being played by another straight guy.

It shouldn’t matter—but it does.

On the show, Casey toed the line of playing to the stereotype and then subverting it when playing Kevin. I mean, they ended the first episode with Kevin going to hook up with a closeted football player on the riverbank and finding Jason Blossom’s dead body. So when Kevin was overplaying the flamboyance and I thought the actor was gay, I accepted it.

Part of Riverdale’s charm is indulging stereotypes only to discard them. The classic trope of Archie as a jock torn between music and sports is dragged up tiredly, only to be tossed aside when Veronica Lodge asked, “Can’t we, in this post-James Franco world, just be all things at once?” And so I assumed that’s what they were doing with Kevin—trying to by cheeky. They were saying, “Hey, you know we don’t actually think gay people act like this—we’re chiller than that.”

I took it as ironically challenging the stereotype; of toying with expectations until he was given a deeper storyline. But even if Kevin Keller gets a great storyline later on, a part of me will forever be salty.

It was revolutionary to have a gay character introduced into the canon of a comic series that began in 1942. It’s not revolutionary to have a straight guy playing gay on screen, no matter how much winking accompanies the bitchy rapport. It invokes the very damaging idea of “gay for pay” (an entire OTHER article that I need time to unpack), that the most attractive thing for a gay guy to aspire towards is actually heterosexuality.

Riverdale marketed itself as sexy, bold and risk-taking. It made the conscious effort to be “woke.” The character of Josie—of the Pussycats—is played by Ashleigh Murray, a woman of color. Cole Sprouse made the comment that he hopes his character, Jughead Jones, is portrayed as asexual. (Thank you?)

But the fact that the only gay character, in a line-up of actors so bland you could bag them as Wonder Bread and sell them for sandwiches, is played by a straight person undercuts any progress they think they’ve made. Because the acting choices Cott made when I thought he was gay turn from satirical to patronizing.

There’s the argument that the actor was simply the best person for the role. And maybe that’s true, but there were definitely gay, bisexual and queer actors who auditioned for the part. Actors who were probably handsome in the exact same way as Casey Cott, with the same full lips and dark, severely parted hair. Actors who do not have the advantage, unlike Cott, of oftentimes playing the reverse. Straight actors can play gay roles, and are often congratulated for them, but the opposite is hardly ever the case.

The easiest question is “Why not?”

Why not go the extra mile and find someone who is actually representative of the progress you are so proudly claiming? If it was a priority to honor the character of Kevin by bringing him to the screen, why was it not a priority to honor the character by finding him a gay actor? Because it’s 2017 and if you’re going to be resting on the laurels of progressiveness, you should be progressive in every aspect.

It shouldn’t matter, and maybe it won’t eventually, but it does right now. We as a community have fought for too long for half as much. And it might be childish to invoke the struggles of the community when discussing a CW show. But it’s what that CW show stands for. Honor our stories and our identities by giving work to someone who can tell that story. The problem is not that Casey Cott isn’t a great actor, or that he portrays the character well. It’s that there was a queer actor who probably could’ve done the role just as well. We shouldn’t accept whatever portrayals we can get. We shouldn’t accept the minimum. That’s not fair. And that’s not right.

Will I still watch the show? Yes—I’m hooked. Will I still recap it? Yes. But this was also bugging me, and I needed to figure out why.